Aging surveillance drones become flying Wi-Fi hotspots

With all of the talk of Facebook’s efforts to blanket the planet with drones that the company promises will provide global Wi-Fi accessibility, another technology leader, the US military’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), has also entered the drone Wi-Fi game.

Through DARPA’s new “Mobile Hotspots Program,” the agency has planned to retrofit a fleet of aging RQ-7 shadow drones that were once deployed for various surveillance missions by the US military in Iraq. The repurposed drones will now be used to help the military carry out operations in remote locations that lack Internet connectivity.

The hotspot program aims to provide a 1Gbps communications backbone to deployed units. In order to establish a secure connection from ground stations without requiring large antennas, each drone will be equipped with a lightweight, low-power pod, holding low-noise amplifiers, which DARPA claims can boost signals while minimizing background noise. The drones can apparently run for nine-hour shifts to provide continual coverage as needed.

“Missions in remote, forward operating locations often suffer from a lack of connectivity to tactical operation centers and access to valuable intelligence surveillance and reconnaissance (IRS) data. The assets needed for long-range, high-bandwidth communications capabilities are often unavailable,” Dick Ridgway, DARPA program manager, said in a press statement. "DARPA’s mobile hotspots program aims to help overcome this challenge by developing a reliable, on-demand capability for establishing long-range, high-capacity reachback that is organic to tactical units."

“The Phase 1 field tests were very successful," Ridgway told Ars. "The pointing, acquisition, and tracking algorithms were very fast, with some showing millimeter-wave link alignment in just a few seconds." This, he noted, will "enable the formation of a high-capacity backhaul network between aerial and ground platforms."

While it's unlikely that the people living in military-occupied regions will be able to benefit from DARPA’s Wi-Fi services, such a project could have civilian applications in outdoor event settings, or perhaps in remote emergency situations where Internet connectivity could help rescue operators.

So let me get this straight we have the technology to get 1Gbps internet to the middle of fucking nowhere Iraq but I can't get that to my house in the middle of a medium size city on the east coast.

Why have we not forced the ISPs to upgrade yet?

Because for DARPA, money is no object. That 1gbps link probably costs them on the order of $1 million a month to operate.

Coincidentally, you can get a 1gbps link to your house today if you're willing to pay someone to run the fiber and then pay ~$1500/mo + metered traffic for it.

If you mean AFFORDABLE 1gbps internet connections for residential customers, well, that's a different story. We haven't forced the ISPs to upgrade yet because the number of people willing to pay what it would cost to provide the service on a wide basis (i.e. Google Fiber hand-picking the cheapest places to deploy doesn't count) is too low to support the service right now.

DARPA just researches and doesn't do any final applications, so any use of this technology is pretty open. That said, it's military oriented, so who knows how useful it would be for rescue operations with commercial WiFi equipment.

Am I the only one who reads "airborne WiFi hotspot" as "homing beacon for SAMs"?

I don't think broadcasting RF signals makes these older UAVs much more vulnerable. They are already sitting ducks for any remotely modern air defense system. Plus they continuously broadcast for the command and control link anyway.

Am I the only one who reads "airborne WiFi hotspot" as "homing beacon for SAMs"?

I don't think broadcasting RF signals makes these older UAVs much more vulnerable. They are already sitting ducks for any remotely modern air defense system. Plus they continuously broadcast for the command and control link anyway.

So let me get this straight we have the technology to get 1Gbps internet to the middle of fucking nowhere Iraq but I can't get that to my house in the middle of a medium size city on the east coast.

Why have we not forced the ISPs to upgrade yet?

Because for DARPA, money is no object. That 1gbps link probably costs them on the order of $1 million a month to operate.

Coincidentally, you can get a 1gbps link to your house today if you're willing to pay someone to run the fiber and then pay ~$1500/mo + metered traffic for it.

If you mean AFFORDABLE 1gbps internet connections for residential customers, well, that's a different story. We haven't forced the ISPs to upgrade yet because the number of people willing to pay what it would cost to provide the service on a wide basis (i.e. Google Fiber hand-picking the cheapest places to deploy doesn't count) is too low to support the service right now.

How much of that $1 million per month operating cost includes keeping the thing from getting shot down, and keeping hostilely from jamming the signal?

I'm not trying to be flip, I've got to imagine that's a large percentage of the operating cost and I'd be curious just how much you could get it down without having to worry about things like evasion/countermeasures; if the bandwidth is a low enough percentage then remember, in some places even having 1/100th of that bandwidth would be better than what you can affordable get nowadays.

So let me get this straight we have the technology to get 1Gbps internet to the middle of fucking nowhere Iraq but I can't get that to my house in the middle of a medium size city on the east coast.

Why have we not forced the ISPs to upgrade yet?

Because for DARPA, money is no object. That 1gbps link probably costs them on the order of $1 million a month to operate.

Coincidentally, you can get a 1gbps link to your house today if you're willing to pay someone to run the fiber and then pay ~$1500/mo + metered traffic for it.

If you mean AFFORDABLE 1gbps internet connections for residential customers, well, that's a different story. We haven't forced the ISPs to upgrade yet because the number of people willing to pay what it would cost to provide the service on a wide basis (i.e. Google Fiber hand-picking the cheapest places to deploy doesn't count) is too low to support the service right now.

How much of that $1 million per month operating cost includes keeping the thing from getting shot down, and keeping hostilely from jamming the signal?

I'm not trying to be flip, I've got to imagine that's a large percentage of the operating cost and I'd be curious just how much you could get it down without having to worry about things like evasion/countermeasures; if the bandwidth is a low enough percentage then remember, in some places even having 1/100th of that bandwidth would be better than what you can affordable get nowadays.

I was just making up numbers (if you want to state an assumption, let's just assume that security is already covered by the other drones in the area armed with weapons). But it's definitely not cheap to:

* Maintain a drone mechanically * Fuel the drone * Provide an uplink within line-of-sight to the drone * Write software to run the drone * Program a flight path

Drones take off and they land all day long. If you want to ensure reliable communications, you've got to keep them flying 24/7. That means for a single link, you're running multiple drones (since these drones can stay aloft for 9 hours.) So not just one drone, but probably closer to 10. Take the monthly operating costs for a single drone and multiply by 10, and add in the ground tech you'd need to feed data to these drones. I can see it being easily over $1 million per month.

So let me get this straight we have the technology to get 1Gbps internet to the middle of fucking nowhere Iraq but I can't get that to my house in the middle of a medium size city on the east coast.

Why have we not forced the ISPs to upgrade yet?

Because for DARPA, money is no object. That 1gbps link probably costs them on the order of $1 million a month to operate.

Coincidentally, you can get a 1gbps link to your house today if you're willing to pay someone to run the fiber and then pay ~$1500/mo + metered traffic for it.

If you mean AFFORDABLE 1gbps internet connections for residential customers, well, that's a different story. We haven't forced the ISPs to upgrade yet because the number of people willing to pay what it would cost to provide the service on a wide basis (i.e. Google Fiber hand-picking the cheapest places to deploy doesn't count) is too low to support the service right now.

How much of that $1 million per month operating cost includes keeping the thing from getting shot down, and keeping hostilely from jamming the signal?

I'm not trying to be flip, I've got to imagine that's a large percentage of the operating cost and I'd be curious just how much you could get it down without having to worry about things like evasion/countermeasures; if the bandwidth is a low enough percentage then remember, in some places even having 1/100th of that bandwidth would be better than what you can affordable get nowadays.

I was just making up numbers (if you want to state an assumption, let's just assume that security is already covered by the other drones in the area armed with weapons). But it's definitely not cheap to:

* Maintain a drone mechanically * Fuel the drone * Provide an uplink within line-of-sight to the drone * Write software to run the drone * Program a flight path

Drones take off and they land all day long. If you want to ensure reliable communications, you've got to keep them flying 24/7. That means for a single link, you're running multiple drones (since these drones can stay aloft for 9 hours.) So not just one drone, but probably closer to 10. Take the monthly operating costs for a single drone and multiply by 10, and add in the ground tech you'd need to feed data to these drones. I can see it being easily over $1 million per month.

I don't know how you do your math, but unless it takes longer than 9 hours to refuel those drones, you only need 2 to provide 24/7 coverage. As for a flight path, circling over the area shouldn't be too difficult for these drones. And replacing the drone on station every 9 hours is not "drones tak[ing] off and land[ing] all day long."

So let me get this straight we have the technology to get 1Gbps internet to the middle of fucking nowhere Iraq but I can't get that to my house in the middle of a medium size city on the east coast.

Why have we not forced the ISPs to upgrade yet?

Because for DARPA, money is no object. That 1gbps link probably costs them on the order of $1 million a month to operate.

Coincidentally, you can get a 1gbps link to your house today if you're willing to pay someone to run the fiber and then pay ~$1500/mo + metered traffic for it.

If you mean AFFORDABLE 1gbps internet connections for residential customers, well, that's a different story. We haven't forced the ISPs to upgrade yet because the number of people willing to pay what it would cost to provide the service on a wide basis (i.e. Google Fiber hand-picking the cheapest places to deploy doesn't count) is too low to support the service right now.

In other words, it's *dirt cheap*. The problem is the lack of political and economic will, our fractured broadband and municipality markets, incumbents fighting tooth and nail to get laws passed to block any other entities from competing with them, etc.

Please disabuse yourself of the notion that it is "expensive" to provide gig FTTH nationwide. We could do it for a fraction of our annual costs in other areas (war in Afghanistan, SS, Medicare, tax breaks to large corporations, etc) and have a significant positive economic multiplier effect.

The rule of thumb for deployed systems such as this are almost always 3x what you need.

There is maintenance, overhaul, crashes, minor repairs, glitches etc. If you need 2 for just your every day coverage, what happens when one goes down or has a part failure? Also you need to account for the fact that you need to cycle them so they don't all go for maintenance at the same time.

The rule of thumb for deployed systems such as this are almost always 3x what you need.

There is maintenance, overhaul, crashes, minor repairs, glitches etc. If you need 2 for just your every day coverage, what happens when one goes down or has a part failure? Also you need to account for the fact that you need to cycle them so they don't all go for maintenance at the same time.

OK then, you can have three. One in the air, one being prepped to relieve the one in the air, one down for maintenance.

So let me get this straight we have the technology to get 1Gbps internet to the middle of fucking nowhere Iraq but I can't get that to my house in the middle of a medium size city on the east coast.

Why have we not forced the ISPs to upgrade yet?

Because for DARPA, money is no object. That 1gbps link probably costs them on the order of $1 million a month to operate.

Coincidentally, you can get a 1gbps link to your house today if you're willing to pay someone to run the fiber and then pay ~$1500/mo + metered traffic for it.

If you mean AFFORDABLE 1gbps internet connections for residential customers, well, that's a different story. We haven't forced the ISPs to upgrade yet because the number of people willing to pay what it would cost to provide the service on a wide basis (i.e. Google Fiber hand-picking the cheapest places to deploy doesn't count) is too low to support the service right now.

In other words, it's *dirt cheap*. The problem is the lack of political and economic will, our fractured broadband and municipality markets, incumbents fighting tooth and nail to get laws passed to block any other entities from competing with them, etc.

Please disabuse yourself of the notion that it is "expensive" to provide gig FTTH nationwide. We could do it for a fraction of our annual costs in other areas (war in Afghanistan, SS, Medicare, tax breaks to large corporations, etc) and have a significant positive economic multiplier effect.

You just get your cotton-pickin' fingers off my Social Security. I paid in far more than I'll ever get out.

So let me get this straight we have the technology to get 1Gbps internet to the middle of fucking nowhere Iraq but I can't get that to my house in the middle of a medium size city on the east coast.

Why have we not forced the ISPs to upgrade yet?

Because for DARPA, money is no object. That 1gbps link probably costs them on the order of $1 million a month to operate.

Coincidentally, you can get a 1gbps link to your house today if you're willing to pay someone to run the fiber and then pay ~$1500/mo + metered traffic for it.

If you mean AFFORDABLE 1gbps internet connections for residential customers, well, that's a different story. We haven't forced the ISPs to upgrade yet because the number of people willing to pay what it would cost to provide the service on a wide basis (i.e. Google Fiber hand-picking the cheapest places to deploy doesn't count) is too low to support the service right now.

How much of that $1 million per month operating cost includes keeping the thing from getting shot down, and keeping hostilely from jamming the signal?

I'm not trying to be flip, I've got to imagine that's a large percentage of the operating cost and I'd be curious just how much you could get it down without having to worry about things like evasion/countermeasures; if the bandwidth is a low enough percentage then remember, in some places even having 1/100th of that bandwidth would be better than what you can affordable get nowadays.

I was just making up numbers (if you want to state an assumption, let's just assume that security is already covered by the other drones in the area armed with weapons). But it's definitely not cheap to:

* Maintain a drone mechanically * Fuel the drone * Provide an uplink within line-of-sight to the drone * Write software to run the drone * Program a flight path

Drones take off and they land all day long. If you want to ensure reliable communications, you've got to keep them flying 24/7. That means for a single link, you're running multiple drones (since these drones can stay aloft for 9 hours.) So not just one drone, but probably closer to 10. Take the monthly operating costs for a single drone and multiply by 10, and add in the ground tech you'd need to feed data to these drones. I can see it being easily over $1 million per month.

First of all, the figure cited appears to be plucked from an orifice, further use of it doesn't make it any more valid or smell better. Second, the Wikipedia citation is actually more informative than the cherry-picked quote; a Shadow System contains four air vehicles (three active/ready, one for spare) associated support vehicles and assigned personnel. The 22 personnel are not required to operate one UAS, it's more like a 24-hour Gran Prix crew complete with spare vehicles. As far as vulnerability to SAMs...you should really learn about what they can/cannot do as far as acquisition capability, it might surprise you as to how ...crappy they really are for a low, slow small flying object with an engine the size of a small rotax.Even a whopping 20Watt mmW uplink, 1Watt WiFi signal isn't that big of a target.

Seems like it would make more sense to use lighter-than-air craft, whether tethered or self-propelled, unless your real aim is to keep up with a fast moving convoy. The logistics of running powered aircraft over a spot for any significant time are going to be complicated, no matter how small the drones are. Why do that when I can just stick a radio on a ballon and more or less forget about it?

Seems like it would make more sense to use lighter-than-air craft, whether tethered or self-propelled, unless your real aim is to keep up with a fast moving convoy. The logistics of running powered aircraft over a spot for any significant time are going to be complicated, no matter how small the drones are. Why do that when I can just stick a radio on a ballon and more or less forget about it?

Think of a use case where a low-observable link that is highly maneuverable and can support a ground station in bad-guy territory and it starts to make a lot more sense than an easily seen, slow moving source. The Shadow is pretty small, fairly camouflaged, nearly silent and very difficult to see when at operational altitudes.

Edit: I just had visions of some Colonel trying to watch a critical operation on his laptop and clicking on the warning that he needs to install a new plugin to view the video and asking why he can't just use the WinXP laptop that he emails his girlfriend with, after all, it never has these problems...

Seems like it would make more sense to use lighter-than-air craft, whether tethered or self-propelled, unless your real aim is to keep up with a fast moving convoy. The logistics of running powered aircraft over a spot for any significant time are going to be complicated, no matter how small the drones are. Why do that when I can just stick a radio on a ballon and more or less forget about it?

Think of a use case where a low-observable link that is highly maneuverable and can support a ground station in bad-guy territory and it starts to make a lot more sense than an easily seen, slow moving source. The Shadow is pretty small, fairly camouflaged, nearly silent and very difficult to see when at operational altitudes.

While I think the a balloon is obviously much quieter and, at altitude, could actually be made less observable than a Shadow by using a matte transparent bladder, you do have a very good point in that a balloon is a much more obvious sign that "hey, your enemies are here" than a UAV that has to fly around and also that a balloon, once detected, is much easier to shoot down.

@Tetraptous: actually, both are harder to shoot down than you might think, they both operate in the thousands of feet above the ground. The real issue is the on-the-move aspect; in a fluid environment, the set-up and take-down times not to mention limited line of sight constraints required for current systems do not enable all of the possible data sets to be exchanged. In light of that, a highly mobile link wins every time.

So let me get this straight we have the technology to get 1Gbps internet to the middle of fucking nowhere Iraq but I can't get that to my house in the middle of a medium size city on the east coast.

Why have we not forced the ISPs to upgrade yet?

Because for DARPA, money is no object. That 1gbps link probably costs them on the order of $1 million a month to operate.

Coincidentally, you can get a 1gbps link to your house today if you're willing to pay someone to run the fiber and then pay ~$1500/mo + metered traffic for it.

If you mean AFFORDABLE 1gbps internet connections for residential customers, well, that's a different story. We haven't forced the ISPs to upgrade yet because the number of people willing to pay what it would cost to provide the service on a wide basis (i.e. Google Fiber hand-picking the cheapest places to deploy doesn't count) is too low to support the service right now.

We have 1 gb fiber to the home here for $76.00 month, not metered, symmetrical.

I have a hard time seeing the use case for these outside some kind of occupying-army scenario. In hot combat, not only will the drones will be really obvious targets, they'll also be a tipoff to the enemy about where activity is taking place (and if there's a lot of communication, where the units relying on the drone are). So special operations supported by drone wifi would be right out. Even moreso, any mission where soldiers used this capability would have to be planned in such a way that sudden loss of wifi didn't lead to everybody getting killed.

So where do we have complete air superiority, expect to have thousands or tens of thousands of soldiers on an ongoing basis, and not be facing a technologically competent adversary?

Seems like it would make more sense to use lighter-than-air craft, whether tethered or self-propelled, unless your real aim is to keep up with a fast moving convoy. The logistics of running powered aircraft over a spot for any significant time are going to be complicated, no matter how small the drones are. Why do that when I can just stick a radio on a ballon and more or less forget about it?

Because they've already got these now obsolete drones, and are re-purposing them.

I have a hard time seeing the use case for these outside some kind of occupying-army scenario. In hot combat, not only will the drones will be really obvious targets, they'll also be a tipoff to the enemy about where activity is taking place (and if there's a lot of communication, where the units relying on the drone are). So special operations supported by drone wifi would be right out. Even moreso, any mission where soldiers used this capability would have to be planned in such a way that sudden loss of wifi didn't lead to everybody getting killed.

So where do we have complete air superiority, expect to have thousands or tens of thousands of soldiers on an ongoing basis, and not be facing a technologically competent adversary?

Today, all wireless data network are in buildings and many outdoor locations. Critics of the Homeless Hotspots at the 2012 South by Southwest festival ought to taste foot sweat right now, as their feet are firmly in their mouths. Regardless of protests of exploitation, the experiment got 11 of 13 homeless individuals off the roads with the finances they raised.